macbook?

[Village Idiot]

I did not read all the posts but I would buy the Mac Book Pro, not going to get into a big discussion about PC/Mac either. Mac Book pros are just the best laptop with the best OS for photography bar none. They run flawlessly, the OS just smokes all the others, there is no lag times, no crashes, no issues at all. I have 2 Mac Book Pros since there launch I have not used anything else, I have tried a regular mac book ( good just the extra graphic power from a the pro is worth the cost) and I own a HP Laptop that was a gift from a client, top of the line, nice laptop but as far as using it for work it just does not compare.

If a Windows laptop was put on the Market that was on Par with a Mac Book Pro I would consider it, there isn't. The reason it is recommended it because it is the best for this type of work. No professional well paid photographer I know and I know many use anything but Mac Book Pros and other Mac computers, G5, iMac. We all use them for a reason, we are not "Fanboys" we are professionals who make a living and very good ones and know what is best. You think if I could buy a PC computer at less that performed as well I wouldn't? I upgrade on average 12-18 months and I keep an eye on what is out, what is current and most of all what is the best. So it is for a reason your told to get one, ask any top professional what they use and why and 9.9 times out of 10 they use Macs (Probably higher, I don't know one other photographer who doesn't own a a Macbook Pro). I don't know any portrait or wedding photographers so in that area I could be wrong, but those of us who do corporate, fine art, fashion all use Macs because they may cost more, but they are the best for what we do. Nothing to do with marketing, being a "fanboy" it is about using what is the best, the rest of the discussion is just utter nonsense period.

PS: Great move on getting one, you will be happy you did.

My MBP came with a keyboard with crooked keys. I had it fixed and they replaced it with a keyboard with crooked keys. CS3 crashes on my MBP. CS2 never crashed on my Vista notebook, which I've been running Vista on flawlessly since a few weeks after it's release. When I went to push the power button on my MBP about three weeks after having it, it dropped down into the case. Some times, it takes forever for Bridge to load up all the files as viewable thumbnails and I've gotten then spinning beach ball of death on more than one occasion.

If there were no problems, then you couldn't search yahoo or google for "Mac prbolems" and find whole forums dedicated to helping users with issues.

I know plenty of photographers that use other computers than a mac. I know some that got a better deal than buying something like a MBP. You definitely seem a bit jaded, so you'll probably ignore most of what I've said, but if you want, I can find you post after post from forum after forum with mac problems. It's a machine after all. They're not perfect unless you're oblivious to it's flaws. Anything and everything can fail at any point in time.

Ed. Oh, and by "OS smokes all others", you mean Windows right? Because OS X is based on UNIX/LINUX and there's some flavors of LINUX that are just as good if not better than OS X.

 

[ANDS!]

Well, we tried. But its tough when you're up against the lure of a free iPod touch. Just don't become a Mac-Douche.

 

[Rhys]

None of this can be user error, right? Because, after all, she has to have the same computer expertise as you. I'm typing this from a Compaq laptop and I haven't had ONE major issue in 2 years.

Ahem.... From new the wifi on my Compaq didn't perform well. None of the fixes suggested by Compaq's helpdesk ever actually worked. In the end I simply reformatted and reinstalled and that solved the initial wifi problems and also removed all the crappy trial software.

My wife's XP box has had issues for a long time. It really needs a reformat and reinstall. It has been coming out with a variety of 0x000000ed and 0x00000077 and 0x0000007a errors interspersed with others. Then there's the general slowdown of all the XP boxes. This is 100% due to XP's increasing overhead, not viruses or installed software.

In fact the compaq I'm using right now will end up with Ubuntu on it in all likleyhood.

 

[RyanLilly]

thank you! i ended up ordering the macbook pro today with a $200 student discount, and $200 off the software i need...and a free ipod touch! hahah
thanks for everyones input

You'll love it, Plus that iPod comes in handy around campus, its nice to have a real internet browser in your pocket!

 

[Rhys]

Latest XP problem. My own XP laptop which has been performing OK but which has been in my safe for most of the last 2 months suddenly lost its wifi ability. I discovered after investigation that nothing had actually caused the problem outside of XP itself. No software or viruses had been installed. Only Microsoft updates had been installed. No dubious websites had been visited. It took a little investigation to identify the exact problem and simply deleting and allowing XP to reinstall the driver solved the problem. That's my Compaq under XP and why I am moving into Apple with OSX and possibly using Linux on some of the shared machines.

 

[reg]

Well, whatever you end up happy with. I'm still doing just fine on my Compaq laptop while my father's constantly having problems with his Compaq desktop - and it's usually his fault.

 

[Rhys]

Well, whatever you end up happy with. I'm still doing just fine on my Compaq laptop while my father's constantly having problems with his Compaq desktop - and it's usually his fault.

This is the strange thing about Windows. It seems generally to slow down with the amount of use it gets. Some installations work and some don't - for no apparent reason. I can remember installing Windows on one machine - just putting the OS CD in, letting it rip and answering the questions along the route then finding windows just wouldn't start or work. I restarted the CD and it reinstalled and it worked. No difference. It didn't work the first time around but did the second. This is apparently quite common. As far as XP's stability, I have seen so many devastating crashes and inexplicable failures through XP that it's really quite depressing. I used to see daily a whole series of problems from XP when I worked in a computer repair shop. I maintain 6 XP systems. Two have never ever been connected to the internet, never have software instralled other than the standard office stuff and dental practice management software. Nobody can put a CD/DVD or a floppy into them and the staff there don't understand what a USB keydrive is. I get regular problems to resolve with those machines - just through standard use. I can honestly say that I have never ever seen a problem-free windows system aside from NT4 which I installed on an old laptop. I'm waiting to see what problems if any I get with my Mac.

 

[reg]

I'd also like to point out that, despite the fact that I have XP at home and some of these posts I made in this thread mighta sounded anti-Apple, I LOVE OSX!!! I've only used it at the library but it's damn cool AND a nice change. I simply use XP because it's lowest common denominator for computers and when I actually *did* go through with trying to install Linux, I couldn't make a new partition and chkdsk went into an infinite void when I went to use it (i.e. didn't help s#!t)

I think you'll be very happy with a Mac.

And yes, Windows does slowly fail simply with the number of turn-on, shut-down cycles. It's an inherent problem with the kernel it's written on.

Note: I'm no technician but I know more than the average end-user.

 

[Rhys]

I'd also like to point out that, despite the fact that I have XP at home and some of these posts I made in this thread mighta sounded anti-Apple, I LOVE OSX!!! I've only used it at the library but it's damn cool AND a nice change. I simply use XP because it's lowest common denominator for computers and when I actually *did* go through with trying to install Linux, I couldn't make a new partition and chkdsk went into an infinite void when I went to use it (i.e. didn't help s#!t)

I think you'll be very happy with a Mac.

And yes, Windows does slowly fail simply with the number of turn-on, shut-down cycles. It's an inherent problem with the kernel it's written on.

Note: I'm no technician but I know more than the average end-user.

I tried to install a dual-boot Linux with Windows and it screwed up the boot sector so thoroughly that I had to reformat.

Linux has some cool tools. The main point of my experiences with Windows and Linux is that I am now a firm believer of OS on one HDD and data on another HDD. My regret with Windows is that as the passwords are in a poorly encrypted and hidden section of the registry, they can't just be downloaded and saved to a text file without specialist software (which I could write as I used to do a lot of Windows programming).

What puzzles me is why Microsoft went and wrote Vista. They could quite easily have written an entirely different OS with an XP emulator. They could have built more robust kernal with a more robust registry. Personally I would have split the registry into two files - one accessible only from the OS and one accessible by 3rd party software. That way, no 3rd party software (aka viruses) could screw up the OS.